The Long Road Home
by inspired-looney
Summary: Each team member has some thinking to do on the long drive home after The Order 23 Job, a missing scene fic challenge for Leverageland on LJ.


So, this was another Leverageland challenge with the prompt "Family", that could mean the team as a family or each team member's own family, it didn't matter, as long as it was about family.

I wrote this in less than an hour and didn't do a proper read through cause it was late, so expect lots of mistakes and please forgive me, it didn't win anything so I can't be bothered going back through it. (Although, I can't complain too much, I voted for the winners and they did rock!)

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The rain was beating down hard as the team headed back into the city. The con had been harder than expected; taking over a hospital, hiding from the feds and making the mark believe they were kidnapping him, whilst making the authorities believe he was trying to escape.

As the non-descript black car headed back to Boston, each member of the team was lost in their own thoughts and seemingly unaware of the similar turmoil their colleagues were currently going through.

For Nate, stepping back into a hospital, completely sober had been an experience. Although he didn't really see any kids around, everywhere he looked, something reminded him of Sam, a pleasantly plump nurse; a tall balding doctor; these nameless, faceless people could have been the same people who'd treated his son, they all just blurred together now. He'd been sober for six months and hadn't wanted a drink more than the second he stepped through those doors. His hands gripped the steering wheel, trying to subdue the thoughts and focus on the road in front of him, literally and figuratively.

For Parker, playing the nurse was fun, she loved dressing up and playing the characters that didn't have to be refined or elegant, the crazy ones were the best, the ones that were more like her. She never used to think about the way she was, the way she saw the world compared to other people, normal people, but since the team got back together, she'd found herself thinking about it more and more and wishing she understood what normal was. The crazy characters were fun at the time, but afterwards, they made her sit and examine the inner workings of her brain and wonder why it was so different from those around her. The obvious answer was her childhood, bouncing around from home to foster family and back again, the drunks, the letches and the constant abuse would be enough to drive anyone crazy, but if doing this job, being the good guy had taught her anything, it was that there were so many people out there who'd had just as bad and in some cases worse upbringings than she had, but they hadn't all turned out crazy, so why was she?

A single tear rolled down her face as she continued to stare out the window, a tear that went unnoticed by the ever watchful Hardison, but tonight, he was too busy remembering his own past.

Hardison's doldrums weren't to do with lost relatives or deep and meaningful investigations of his psyche, his mind had turned to his nana. Just like Parker he'd bounced from home to home to home before landing with nana, the kindest, sweetest, badass foster parent there was. It nearly destroyed her when she trusted the wrong guy and her life savings went up in smoke. Hardison was just glad he didn't have to spend a lot of time in the same room with the mark today; he might have killed him on principal! Nana didn't have anyone fighting for her, didn't have someone to make it alright and get her money back, she just had her kids and had to get up each day, put one foot in front of the other and just keep going, slapping a smile on and pretending everything was okay.

Sitting in the front seat, Sophie was going over her death scene. She usually loved a good death scene, the drama and excitement of it never failed to make her tingle, except for today. She didn't know why, she didn't know how, but she was getting tired of acting. Her whole life was an act, even her name wasn't real. She felt like she was just spending all her time putting on a character, pretending to be something she wasn't and after all these years, it was finally getting to her. She couldn't help but wonder just how much longer she could keep going.

Eliot's day had been worst of all, reliving not only the death of a relative, but his part in it, accidental or not, he'd always feel guilty. Today, watching that little kid, scared out of his mind, not sure who to trust or what to say for fear of the repercussions, that boy was him over twenty years ago, before he'd learnt to fight back. The broken bones; the cuts and bruises, they'd heal, it was just scar tissue that would fade in time, but what would be left was a little boy with a broken spirit. It had taken every ounce of control Eliot had fought so hard to gain not to lash out at the father, to visit on him every ounce of harm he'd done to his son but he knew, all too well, that hurting the father wouldn't fix the problems the son was going to face, he'd been there, done that and barely lived to tell the tale.

Before any of them knew what had happened, they found themselves back in Boston, back at the bar, but rather than their usual post con drink and celebration, five people got out of the car, said a quiet and sober goodnight and headed off in five different directions.

They'd come together again, they were a team, a family, but right now they all had ghosts they had to face and time was the only healer.

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Go on, hit the review button, you know you want to!


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